Andrea La Valleur-Purvis is a British-American sculptor based in Central Texas. Working primarily in steel, she creates bold abstract forms that explore resilience, balance, and the architecture of emotion. Her sculptures, ranging from intimate works to large scale outdoor pieces, challenge familiar structures through unexpected angles, dynamic tension, and rhythms that feel both deliberate and spontaneous.
In my sculpture practice, I transform unyielding materials into testaments of resilience and play—reflecting my capacity to find beauty and energy even in life’s most challenging moments.
My work is deeply autobiographical, emerging from my position as multi-cultural transplant and responding to both personal and lived experiences of perseverance.
I’ve always been drawn to questions that don’t have easy answers, and my work emerges from wrestling with these complexities. Drawing from my European upbringing, sense of curiosity about life and love for exploring new places, I interpret the intricate ways humans navigate and transform their circumstances.
Each sculpture becomes a meditation on adaptation and transformation, much like the materials I work with. In manipulating resistant mediums like steel—I mirror the human experience of persevering through difficulty to find moments of clarity and breakthrough. This process reflects my belief that engaging with challenging materials and concepts can be a transformative and healing experience.
My work invites others to see reflections of their own capacity for resilience—embodying strength, conviction, and the momentum to keep moving forward despite uncertainty. As an artist committed to developing my mind and exploring with curiosity, my goal is to engage audiences in recognizing their own potential for transformation and creative agency in shaping the world around them.
Andrea La Valleur-Purvis is a British-American sculptor based in Central Texas who creates bold, abstract sculptures that embody resilience and play.
La Valleur-Purvis holds a BFA in Sculpture from the College of Visual Arts (St. Paul, MN), a post-graduate certificate in Innovation and Design Thinking from Emeritus (in collaboration with MIT, Tuck and Columbia Universities), and additional certificates from IDEO and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Her work is deeply informed by her multicultural upbringing in the UK and Germany, raised by British and American parents. As an adult, she spent a year traveling the world solo in 2015, followed by five years living in Spain.
Before returning to her passion for metal sculpture, La Valleur-Purvis held creative roles with visionary tech brands for nearly two decades. In 2023, she released her first series of public art installations for the City of Waco, Texas, where she works from her studio.
She works from her studio in Waco, Texas.
Born in 1975 in Cambridge, England to a British Father and American Mother, the family moved to central Germany in 1977. By age 5, her artwork was included in an multidisciplinary exhibit at the Mathildenhöhe at Darmstadt, Germany.
While in school in Germany, La Valleur-Purvis excelled in art classes, adding photography to her skill set in her early teens. She later held two practicums with accomplished studio photographers.
At 18 she moved to the USA where she continued her artistic development, studying sculpture and visual design at the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from which she received her BFA in 1999.
While in college, La Valleur-Purvis was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism, requiring a life long treatment plan. Years later, during her 5 year stay in Spain, she encountered a second diagnosis, greatly impacting her health and on-going recovery.
In 2003 she moved to Seattle and began exploring visual design as a profession, spending 20+ years working across analog and digital creative environments.
Towards the end of 2014 La Valleur-Purvis made a radical move, selling her material belongings to fulfill her dream of traveling. She spent 2015 traveling to 15 countries, making curious discoveries, new friends, difficult decision and connected deeply to her sense of self.
A few months later in 2016, the artist relocated to Barcelona, where she spent 5 years reconnecting with European life. Towards the end of the world-wide pandemic, La Valleur-Purvis again relocated to the States, settling in Central Texas, where she launched her sculpture practice in late 2022.
Women & Their Work (Austin)
Texas Society of Sculptors
Visual Arts Association (VAA) (UK)
CodaWorx (USA)
City of San Antonio’s Prequalified Artist List
